Conspiracy theorists won’t have a hard time with Boston

Dave Weigel says Alex Jones-type conspiracy theorists are going to have a hard time with yesterday’s attack in Boston because there were too many cameras and witnesses, bad information dies quicker these days, and no politician really stands to gain.

Weigel is wrong for one important reason: People predisposed to believing conspiracy theories don’t care what the evidence is. Weigel cites Alex Jones, who is himself evidence that conspiracy theorists don’t need proof or credibility; to the contrary, the thinner the proof and the less credible the conspiracy theorist, the more believable he is.

Jones is the host of a radio talk show based in Austin. He tells listeners with authority about the government’s “false flag” operations – in which it attacks its own citizens in order to justify some new atrocity it wants to commit. September 11th, for example, was to Jones and his listeners the quintessential example of a government operation designed to implement a New World Order of fascist tyranny and oppression of people like Jones and his listeners. Pretty extraordinary assertion, for which one might expect extraordinary evidence.

But one would be disappointed to find that exactly zero evidence is offered for the belief that in his role of New World Order puppet, George Bush murdered 3,000 citizens and planned to round up people like Jones into FEMA concentration camps.

The theory is offered by a man — Jones — who couldn’t get through community college and has precisely zero expertise in government, diplomacy, military organization and training, or anything other than promoting the scams which are helping make him rich. This is the source from whom conspiracy theorists believe wild assertions.

Not only do they not need evidence to begin with, but the lack of evidence is itself evidence of the insidiousness of the conspiracy. See, they say, the conspiracy goes so deep and is being controlled at such a high level, they’ve managed to make it look completely legitimate.

There’s no point in debating them because no amount of contrary evidence will dissuade them. Conspiracy theories don’t actually explain the world; when terrible or sudden things like yesterday’s attack happen, implausible theories explaining them act as a salve for the emotionally unstable or intellectually deficient who otherwise might find themselves in a spiral of panic.